India will be 3rd largest GDP in 5 yrs: Kant

Bengaluru: India will surpass Japan and Germany to emerge as the third-largest economy and also the third-largest stock market in the world in the next five years, India’s G20 Sherpa and former NITI Aayog CEO, Amitabh Kant said on Thursday.

Speaking at a conference on “The Deccan Conversations, Accelerating Our Growth Story”, organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (Southern Region), he said India has been growing in the last three quarters at 8.3 per cent plus and has emerged as a very “resilient powerhouse” during this period. Quoting the IMF, Kant said India will be contributing close to 20 per cent of the world’s economic expansion in the next decade and South is the engine of India’s growth story for the country to be a $35 trillion economy by 2047.

India, he stressed, needs to grow on the back of manufacturing. smart urbanisation, and agriculture. “India needs to improve learning outcomes and skills to ensure India provides 30 per cent of the skilled manpower globally by 2047, focus on creating a large number of large companies in India to create an ecosystem for MSMEs and SMEs to thrive and increase its R&D spending from 0.7 per cent to at least 2.5-3 per cent of GDP,” Kant said.